Mr. Ed Porter says:

>In line with a dissertation I am preparing at present, I would be grateful
>for your opinions on the following statement...
>
>Ravel - impressionist, post-impressionist, colourist or neo-classicist?
>
>I would be interested in your thoughts on this topic, whatever they may be.

As Claude Debussy was an impressionist that you can compare with Monet,
Ravel could be in my opinion (generally speaking) a post-impressionist, as
Repighi...  What about a parallel between Ravel and Chagall? I'm not so
sure, but you know.  If we assume that the Wien School is expressionist...
we should think that Ravel is somewhere between Debussy and Schoenberg,
don't we? Ravel is deffinitiveley not a neo-classicist (as Stravinsky)...
Maybe Ravel is from another school but for sure I can associate Ravel to
Respighi.  Even if Respighi's orchestration (learned from the Master of
masters Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov) is better.  Yes, his Daphnis and Chloe
could be considered without doubt an impressionist master piece...  Than
maybe his whole production consist in several styles...  You know...as
Schnittke called his own style: "polistylistic", I think that Ravel cannot
be considered under only one influence...  Ravel was always very personal
in his composition...

Martin Pitchon